What works would you sell on the street?

Touch The Snake, 2024. Digital print – A1.
Edition of 7. Tree Free Bamboo Paper – cream 160gsm, Epson Surecolour 9500 Ultrachrome.

Permission slips and Dictums for Today

In Iran today, the state forces women to cover their hair, and tells them exactly how to cover it. All of Iran’s minorities suffer like this, be they a religious, ethnic, sexual, gender, economical or any other kind of minority, they are expected do as the regime dictates on pain of fine, arrest, torture or death and there is little recourse to justice. Like the Chinese and Russian governments, the Iranian regime can ‘disappear’ you at any time. The regime’s state enforcers roam the streets in vans and on foot as constant reminders, iron-jawed women clad in black from head to toe, men with implements with which to restrain women and school children at any point in their day, forcing them into the vans where they might disappear forever.

This is no exaggeration.

Regarding the internationally famous cases of #MahsaAmini, and #ArmitaGeravand, in stark contrast is our ancient literature, such as The Persian Book of Kings, which regales those who follow their instinct, who defy, women who act on their desires without guilt, without reprimand. Curiosity is not a sin. How at odds are the regime, then, with Iran’s historical and foundational identity?

Similarly, how close are ‘Christian’ countries founded on the belief that man’s fall from Paradise was caused by a woman heeding a snake, to their current cultures? They seem an inverse of the Iranian one. In English the word for paradise comes from the ancient Persian ‘pardis’, ‘walled garden’. But I want to give permission and courage in these things. If Iranians and those shying away from their sensual, flawed selves, might be encouraged to re-embrace this and to ‘touch the snake’ what advice would UK, USA and Europe need at the same time, to “to get ourselves back to the garden”, as Joni Mitchell put it?

My work allows me to provide dictums for us with which to navigate our waking and dreaming hours. When life is so absolutely finite, why waste so much time online, nourishing celebs and shock jocks, rather than ourselves or the planet, the system that sustains us?

As with my light box and neon works, the equation of human reliance on electricity, versus time surfaces not only in the meaning, but in the materiality of the piece.

Plastic to Plastic, 2024. Digital print – A1.
Edition of 7. Tree Free Bamboo Paper – cream 160gsm, Epson Surecolour 9500 Ultrachrome.

I printed these large posters at London College of Communication, formerly London College of Printing, on the most awesome giant printing presses. Thanks to the print room for the support.